RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Democrat Civil War

Massachusetts voters streamed to the polls on Tuesday in a close election for a new U.S. senator that could derail Democrats' dominance in Washington and scuttle President Barack Obama's sweeping healthcare reform.

What looked likely weeks ago to be an easy Democratic victory has turned into a desperate scramble after a surge by the Republican, affable state Senator Scott Brown, over the past few weeks.

Latest opinion polls suggest Brown could defeat state Attorney General Martha Coakley, and take away the Democrats' 60-vote supermajority in Congress, which enables them to overcome Republican procedural roadblocks. Voter worries about the economy and healthcare reform have helped Brown.

In Washington, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president does not believe healthcare reform will fail if Coakley loses. But Obama is "both surprised and frustrated" and "not pleased" by the closeness of the Massachusetts race, Gibbs said.

Polls will stay open until 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT on Wednesday). Given the expected close vote, results could take a few hours to emerge after polls close.

Reflecting Wall Street's expectations for healthcare reform, investors drove health insurance and drug company shares higher, betting a Brown victory would at least slow Obama's healthcare plans.

Hospital companies, which may gain more insured customers under health reform, saw their shares slump.

"If Brown wins, it is our view that Obamacare will not pass Congress," Avik Roy, a healthcare analyst with Monnes Crespi Hardt, said in a research note.

The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor Index and the AMEX Pharmaceutical index outperformed the broader market, rising 2.3 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively.

HIGH TURNOUT COULD HELP ENERGIZED REPUBLICANS

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he was bracing for voting levels similar to that of a regular state election given the intense interest in the race.

That view was borne out as voters braved drizzle and light snow to get to the ballot box. Local media reported long lines at some polling places.

High turnout could benefit the more energized Brown campaign, even though registered Democrats in Massachusetts hold a sizable numerical advantage.

Democratic Party icon Edward Kennedy, who held the seat for almost 47 years, died in August of brain cancer. Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed by the state's governor in September to occupy Kennedy's seat and will remain in the Senate until a winner is sworn in.

Massachusetts last elected a Republican to the Senate in 1972, but the weak economy and doubts about the healthcare overhaul have moved voters to abandon political loyalties.

Their possible change of heart could not have come at a more crucial juncture for Obama.

Democrats now control 60 votes in the Senate to 40 for the Republicans. The loss of one seat could hamper the Democrats' ability to cut off debate and proceed to a vote on the planned healthcare overhaul. Brown has promised to be the Republican's 41st vote to kill healthcare legislation.

More broadly, an upset in Massachusetts, or even a narrow win for Coakley, would raise the specter of large losses for Democrats in midterm congressional elections in November.

'ANGER AND FRUSTRATION'

The Republican has attracted strong support from independent voters, including many who backed Obama in 2008.

"There's an anger, a frustration that's being felt in Massachusetts," said James Gomes, director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University in Massachusetts.

A number of polls over the past week have shown Brown edging ahead, although mostly within the margin of error for each survey. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report judged the race a toss-up.

In Washington, House of Representatives Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said he expected Coakley to win but he understood why voters were unhappy. "It's a tough time to have a special election because people are angry," he said.

Millions of dollars have flooded into the state to buy nonstop television advertising for both sides, transforming a relatively sleepy contest into a bitter brawl.

Coakley has been criticized for a lackluster campaign. She took almost a week off from the campaign trail around Christmas, at a time when Brown's appeal was on the rise.

its as if millions of whomods cried out at once and were suddenly bitch slapped into silence!

The loss by the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold was a stunning embarrassment for the White House after Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save the foundering candidate. Her defeat on Tuesday signaled big political problems for the president's party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

Brown's victory was the third major loss for Democrats in statewide elections since Obama became president. Republicans won governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey in November.

"I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts," said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee. "There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient."

Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president's health care legislation. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters. The trouble may go deeper: Democratic lawmakers could read the results as a vote against Obama's broader agenda, weakening their support for the president. And the results could scare some Democrats from seeking office this fall.

The Republican will finish Kennedy's unexpired term, facing re-election in 2012.

Brown led by 52 per cent to 47 percent with all but 3 percent of precincts counted. Turnout was exceptional for a special election in January, with light snow reported in parts of the state. More voters showed up at the polls Tuesday than in any non-presidential general election in Massachusetts since 1990.

One day shy of the first anniversary of Obama's swearing-in, the election played out amid a backdrop of animosity and resentment from voters over persistently high unemployment, Wall Street bailouts, exploding federal budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

"I voted for Obama because I wanted change. ... I thought he'd bring it to us, but I just don't like the direction that he's heading," said John Triolo, 38, a registered independent who voted in Fitchburg.

He said his frustrations, including what he considered the too-quick pace of health care legislation, led him to vote for Brown.

....

Coakley called Brown conceding the race, and Obama talked to both Brown and Coakley, congratulating them on the race.

The Democrat said the president told her: "We can't win them all."

Brown will be the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 30 years.

Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley's supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Days before the polls closed, Democrats were fingerpointing and laying blame.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the House Democrats' campaign effort, said Coakley's loss won't deter his colleagues from continuing to blame the previous administration.

"President George W. Bush and House Republicans drove our economy into a ditch and tried to run away from the accident," he said. "President Obama and congressional Democrats have been focused repairing the damage to our economy."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the House Democrats' campaign effort, said Coakley's loss won't deter his colleagues from continuing to blame the previous administration.

Speaking of which, where's a link to the Iconoclasts?

Iggy?

Looks like they deserted it to be a group on facebook. Which, I think, means they are running out of internet.

President Barack Obama advised fellow Democrats against trying to jam a health care bill through Congress after taking a devastating hit from the loss of a Senate seat. He said Wednesday it's time to come together around a bill that can draw Republican support, too.

Brown's pollster said my favorite line, though: "Change can go both ways."










Don't get your hopes up, Pariah. It's not a sexual innuendo.

In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.

“We cannot support the Senate bill — period,” is the message that liberals delivered to the Speaker, Dem Rep Raul Grijalva told me in an interview just now.

Some had hoped Pelosi would push liberals to get in line behind this approach, in hopes of expediting reform, but that didn’t appear to happen in this meeting. Pelosi mostly listened, Grijalva said, adding: “We didn’t get any declarative statement from her.”

The meeting, which was polite but blunt in tone, underscores the degree to which Dems are scrambling to figure out a way forward on health care in the wake of last night’s loss. The unwillingness of liberals, and some in labor, to support passing the Senate bill means House Dem leaders need to find another way forward — fast — and leadership aides are scouring procedural rules as we speak.

Tellingly, House liberals also urged Pelosi to consider passing individual pieces of reform through the House as individual bills, and sending them to the Senate to challenge the upper chamber to reject them, Grijalva tells me. Liberals said this approach would be preferable to passing the Senate bill.

For instance, Grijalva said, why not send the Senate individual bills that would, among other things, nix the “Cadillac” tax or close the donut hole, pressuring the Senate to deal with each provision separately?

“If the Senate chooses not to close the donut hole, that’s their damn problem,” Grijalva said. “They’ve had it too easy. One vote controls everything. Collectively, we’re tired of that.”

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health care reform. "If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have."

The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don't throw her a millstone.

After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that ... it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.

And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama not Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.

Bull's-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don't Mirandize terrorists. Don't raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.

These deals -- the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback -- had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff -- in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a ("Cadillac") health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized.

The reason both wings of American liberalism -- congressional and mainstream media -- were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they'd spent Obama's first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year's two gubernatorial elections.

The evidence was unmistakable: Independents, who in 2008 had elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey. On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who had gone 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.

Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to diss Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal -- of a man who had them swooning only a year ago -- something is going on beyond personality.

That something is substance -- political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power -- even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can't even see is in your own interest.

Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?

"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up."

I say: Let them sleep.

I'm glad they are ignoring the wake up call. the worst thing for everyone would be that they pretend to care about America for 9 months and squeek by in the midterms. this way theyll be bounced come novemebr. let them keep going on shows and telling the American people they dont know what they are talking about.

At the end of Barack Obama’s worst week since taking power a year ago, the US president’s fortunes look set only to deteriorate over the coming days. Following the shock defeat of the Democratic candidate in Massachusetts on Tuesday, a move that deprived the president of his 60-seat super-majority in the Senate and left his legislative agenda in tatters, Mr Obama has just four days to reboot the system.

The US president had originally delayed next week’s State of the Union address to Congress in the hope he would get his signature healthcare reform bill enacted in time. That prospect, already waning, was killed dead by the voters in Massachusetts. A growing number of Democrats believe the nine-month effort could collapse altogether.

The death of the healthcare effort would rob Mr Obama of what he had hoped would be the centrepiece of his first State of the Union message. “It now looks extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get anything resembling a broad healthcare bill out of Congress,” said Scott Lilley, a senior fellow at the liberal Centre for American Progress, the think-tank that is closest to the White House. “In his State of the Union, Obama has to slim down his ambitions. It should be short and simple and focus on jobs.”

However, even a more modest agenda looks tough for Mr Obama now. Believing their strategy of total opposition was vindicated by the voters last Tuesday, Republicans are in even less of a mood to co-operate with Democrats than before. The difference is that with 41 seats in the Senate they are in a position to block almost anything Mr Obama proposes – including the Wall Street regulatory measures he announced on Thursday.

“Obama has to decide whether he wants to be a transformational president, which looks optimistic at this stage, or merely an effective president,” says Bruce Josten, head of government affairs at the US Chamber of Commerce, which has spent tens of millions of dollars opposing healthcare. “My advice would be that he pick up the phone and ask for Bill Clinton’s advice on how to recover from a situation like this.”

Nor can Mr Obama rely on unity within his own party, which has been in disarray, if not panic, since Tuesday. For example, Mr Obama’s more populist tack on Wall Street re-regulation failed to attract endorsement from Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, even though he was present when Mr Obama made the announcement.

Others, such as Tim Johnson, Democratic senator for South Dakota and a senior member of the banking committee, were already opposed to elements of Mr Obama’s regulatory proposals including the plan to establish a consumer financial protection agency.

Worse, most people do not think Mr Obama can even command unity within his own administration on the Wall Street proposals amid growing speculation about whether Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, can survive in his job. Mr Geithner was conspicuously sidelined during Thursday’s announcement by the presence of Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, who lent his name to the push to rein in Wall Street banks.

The speculation about Mr Geithner is only likely to grow. “The Obama proposals were clearly politically motivated and came from the White House not the Treasury,” says a Democratic adviser to the administration, who withheld his name.

Finally, there is increasingly open Democratic disaffection about the way Mr Obama is managing relations with Capitol Hill. Many believe that Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s aggressive chief of staff, served Mr Obama badly by persuading the president that his election was a transformational moment in US politics that gave him the opportunity to push through long-cherished Democratic goals, such as healthcare reform.

In fact, exit polls from Mr Obama’s election showed that almost two-thirds of the voters cited the economy as their chief concern, with fewer than one in 10 mentioning healthcare. Mr Emanuel is also perceived to have mishandled the day-to-day logistics of getting healthcare through Congress.

By leaving the scripting of the details of the healthcare bill to Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, the White House openly courted the risk of chaos. Tellingly, in his victory speech in Boston on Tuesday, Scott Brown, the new Republican senator, cited voter disdain for the sight of lots of “old men” on Capitol Hill bickering over healthcare reform at a time when their priority was jobs.

“I haven’t seen Rahm Emanuel except on television,” Jim Pascrell, a Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey, told Politico, the news website, on Friday. “We used to see him a lot; I’d like him to come out from behind his desk and meet with the common folk.”

In short, Mr Obama’s nightmare January could easily slip into a nightmare February. “Unless and until the president changes the way his White House, works, things are going to continue to go badly for him,” says the head of a Democratic think-tank. “Heads still have to roll.”

President Barack Obama is known for having a way with words, but some lawmakers from Nevada wish he would pipe down about trips to Sin City.

After sparking a firestorm of criticism from Nevada's elected officials for suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow it in Las Vegas, Obama told U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a letter that he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas.

It was the second time since taking office that Obama singled out Las Vegas as a potential example of spending excessively.

"I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun," Obama said, according to the letter released by Reid's office. "There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations."

Obama said he always enjoys his visits to Las Vegas.

A White House spokesman referred to Obama's letter to Reid and said the administration had no further comment.

Perception and reputation are sensitive issues for Sin City as it struggles to find footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment. Tourism is the Silver State's backbone, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting last February that bailed-out banks shouldn't go to Las Vegas using taxpayer money.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," Obama said, according to a White House transcript of his appearance Tuesday at a high school in North Nashua, N.H.

"You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage," Obama said. "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices."

The comments quickly sparked a flurry of reaction in the Silver State, which supported Obama in the 2008 election. Nevada had an unemployment rate of 13 percent in December.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said during a hastily called news conference that Obama is no friend to Las Vegas and would not be welcomed here if he visits.

"I'll do everything I can to give him the boot," Goodman said. "This president is a real slow learner."

Goodman and others are worried that Obama's words will discourage visitors from coming to Las Vegas and depress the industry further.

"Enough is enough!" Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley said in a statement. "President Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas and he needs to let Americans decide for themselves how and where to spend their hard-earned vacation dollars."

Nevada's tourism has been hit hard during the past two years as consumers everywhere tighten leisure spending and companies spend less on meetings and conventions.

Reid, one of Obama's closest allies, issued a statement headlined "Reid to Obama: 'Lay off Las Vegas'" and was unusually blunt in his reaction.

"The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said. "I would much rather tourists and business travelers spend their money in Las Vegas than spend it overseas."

Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, complained that Obama "failed to grasp the weight that his words carry."

"Once again he has threatened the struggling economy of Las Vegas," Ensign said, recalling what he characterized as Obama's "irresponsible" comment in February 2009.

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and Rep. Dean Heller, both Republicans, and Democratic Rep. Dina Titus also disparaged the president's remarks, while Republican candidates hoping to unseat Reid this year called for an apology.

One year ago, Obama commented during a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., that corporations shouldn't use federal bailout money for trips to Las Vegas, the Super Bowl or corporate jets. Tourism and casino officials said the comment hurt the city as companies canceled meetings in Las Vegas and rescheduled them elsewhere.

Obama later said during a May 2009 trip to Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas that it was nice to get out of Washington and "there's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week."

Goodman said he thought Obama had a "psychological hang-up" of using Las Vegas as an example of excessive spending, and that this time, an apology wouldn't be enough.

"He has to step up right away and say, you know, he wasn't thinking," Goodman said. "Sometimes when he's not using his monitors and reading what he says, he doesn't think. And this is one of those times he didn't think, and he should straighten out the record because he's been here, he knows Las Vegas is a great place."

As Congress begins picking through President Obama's vast election year budget, many Democratic incumbents and candidates seem to be finding something they love — to campaign against.

A Democratic Senate candidate in Missouri denounced the budget's sky-high deficit. A Florida Democrat whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center hit the roof over NASA budget cuts. And an endangered Senate Democrat denounced proposed cuts in farm subsidies.

A headline on the 2010 campaign website of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), blares her opposition to Obama's farm budget: ``Blanche stands up for Arkansas farm families,'' it says.

Heading into an election season in which Republicans are trying to tie Democrats to Obama's unpopular policies, Obama's budget gives his fellow Democrats an unlikely campaign tool — a catalogue of ways to establish their distance from controversial aspects of his administration.

It is a time-tested campaign tactic for politicians to declare their independence of party leaders. But the tactic is particularly important for Democrats this year, because their party dominates Washington, and being an insider is a political liability in an anti-incumbent climate.

Underscoring that dynamic, Obama held a question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats on Wednesday, drawing polite challenges from a procession of incumbents up for reelection.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), a recent party-switcher, questioned trade policies battering the steel industry. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) asked about health care for first responders involved in the Sept. 11attack. The message from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.): ``California is hurting.''

All that underscores a potential gap between Obama's governing agenda and congressional Democrats' political interest in the election. While Democrats on the ballot encounter stiff headwinds, Obama is asking them look at the big picture on the budget, take on tough issues, and let the politics take care of themselves.

``If anybody's searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you, the answer is not to do nothing," Obama told the Senate Democrats. "We've got to finish the job on health care. We've got to finish the job on financial regulatory reform. We've got to finish the job, even though it's hard."

Since his State of the Union address last week, Obama has offered a spirited defense of his agenda, his feisty demeanor an implicit promise of support for those Democrats who work with him. At a time when some might be thinking about parting ways with his agenda, Obama is pressing his case that now is not the time to abandon the ideals that swept him into office.

While Democrats agree with Obama's broad goals, they do not agree with all it takes to achieve them – especially in his budget, which makes little short-term progress in deficit reduction yet calls for spending cuts in many programs.

Lincoln is a dedicated proponent of fiscal responsibility. But she sharply denounced the cuts in farm subsidies that are so important to her state. That is not only good constituent service, but good 2010 politics in a state that voted heavily against Obama in the 2008 election.

Wednesday's meeting with Obama gave Lincoln a televised opportunity to challenge Obama on a broader question. As one of eight Democrats hand-picked by party leaders to question the president, all but one up for re-election this year, Lincoln urged Obama to ``to push back against people in our own party that want extremes.''

Then, in short order, her campaign website featured a news report: ``Lincoln challenges Obama on liberal `extremes.'"

Elsewhere around the country, Rep. Suzanne Kosmas — a freshman Democrat from a Republican leaning part of Florida — minced no words in complaining about Obama's proposed cuts to the NASA budget. The space industry is one of the largest employers in her district.

``The president's proposal lacks a bold vision for space exploration and begs for the type of leadership that he has described as critical for inspiring innovation for the 21st century,'' said Kosmas.

In the swing state of Missouri, Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan wasted no time this week denouncing Obama's budget as profligate.

``I'm disappointed in the president's budget recommendation,'' she said. ``Missouri families have to balance their checkbooks and our government is no different.''

Democrats trumpet that split between their candidate and Obama as Carnahan tries to run as an outsider. But Republicans have tagged her ``Rubberstamp Robin'' for supporting Obama's health care bill and other congressional initiatives.

Probably no vulnerable Democrat has more of a burden in defending Obama's budget than Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), the House Budget Committee Chairman who is facing a strong opponent in his Republican-leaning district.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has already run an ad attacking him for his record in handling deficit-laden budgets. But Spratt has not shied from his association with the volatile issue. When Obama's budget was delivered to Capitol Hill Monday, Spratt joined in a ``photo op'' for its reception.

The photo was run on a conservative blog under the headline: ``Budget now in Spratt's liberal hands.''

The election of Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to fill the seat of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) was a harbinger for Democrats in this fall’s congressional elections, but not for the reasons everyone thinks.

Yes, healthcare reform, bailouts and the growth of government are all liabilities for the party in power. But the Brown victory showed that the potency of terror policy, an issue pushed to the back burner in the historic 2008 presidential campaign, cannot be ignored.

Aides said that though Brown had run aggressively against healthcare reform, it was his argument — in the wake of the Christmas Day attack — that suspected terrorists don’t deserve constitutional rights that had put him over the finish line, according to internal campaign polls.

The White House is now seeking vindication from criticism that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was read his Miranda rights within 50 minutes of capture instead of being held as an enemy combatant. It turns out Abdulmutallab has been talking, providing useful information. The president’s team is taking comfort in the revelation that Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” was Mirandized by the George W. Bush administration within minutes of being taken into custody in December of 2001.

The “Bush did it too” argument, which often works for President Obama, probably won’t move public opinion on this question. It turns out Americans feel the same way Massachusetts does. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found an overwhelming majority opposed giving terror suspects the same legal rights as Americans tried in the U.S. court system, by a margin of 67-28. In that same poll the approval/disapproval margin for Obama’s record on terrorism was 45/44 percent.

The administration is pushing back hard against bipartisan rejection of this policy, even as other significant national-security decisions are suddenly being reconsidered. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the administration, having missed the Jan. 22, 2010 deadline for closing Guantánamo Bay, is rethinking its plan to transfer detainees to a facility in Thomson, Ill. And though the Justice Department remains mum, top Democrats say the administration has scratched plans to hold the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan.

Congress must approve the funding for the transfer of detainees to the Illinois prison, as well as for terror trials, and it appears the president’s party isn’t likely to have the stomach for it. This week Democratic Sens. Jim Webb of Virginia and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas signed on to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) bill cutting off funding for civilian trials for terror suspects in the United States. Webb is from a state Obama won but Democrats lost in Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell’s November landslide. Lincoln is from a state Obama lost by 20 points, and she is in the fight of her political life. On the issue of terror trials, Lincoln and Webb are likely to be in the company of other Democrats soon enough.

This week Obama’s national security team told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they expect, with certainty, an attempted terrorist attack on the homeland within three to six months. Meanwhile, the administration is having trouble defending its record: failing to stop Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan from murdering 13 service members at Fort Hood despite the government’s awareness of his contacts with radicals overseas, failing to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding the Northwest Airlines plane despite his father’s warnings, planning and failing to close Guantánamo Bay, and planning and failing to hold the costly KSM trial (which critics have painted as a show trial) in New York City.

In a tough election year, President Obama can’t expect Democrats to join the fight.